Top Five Mistakes Made in Paid Advertising and How to Avoid Them

Paid advertising still offers a great deal of ROI when approached in a strategic way. Your marketing department likely has a few eggs in its basket when it comes to the different campaigns launched for conversion. In the digital marketing space, paid advertising should still be a prominent piece of the puzzle.

The problem for many advertisers is that they make a mistake in the way they approach their PPC ads. While you can still see a hike in conversion and page views, most of the common mistakes will cost you progress. Often, marketers will falsely believe that it’s paid advertising itself that doesn’t reap the best rewards for their business. They may wonder which is better, SEO or PPC? The truth is that PPC ads might bring in an excellent conversion rate when you eliminate some of the errors you’re making in how you launch the campaign.

Before throwing in the towel on your paid advertising ventures, check out our list of the top five mistakes we see marketers making with their paid advertising campaigns. If some of these resonate for you, it might be time to readjust the way you approach paid advertising.

Top Five Mistakes Made in Paid Advertising.

Jumping the Gun on Your Campaign without Proper Planning. Any paid advertising campaign should start with a detailed plan BEFORE you launch it. A good campaign will always start with some form of market research, competitive analysis, budget creation, and finally goal setting. We like to set SMART goals – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. When you set goals for your campaign, make sure they resonate with a smart strategy that understands the audience, looks at the competition and showcases your position in the market, and has a concrete start and end date. You should know what metrics you need to hit with the campaign and when you expect to see benchmarks reached, before you begin.

Selecting Platforms that don’t Make Sense with Your Audience or Not Understanding Their Tools. Marketers know this but sometimes they simply don’t look deeply enough into their target audience to place their advertising efforts where it will do the most good. A lot of eyes on your ad isn’t the goal, it’s getting your message in front of the right eyes. Each platform comes with its own advantages and strategies, such as understanding how to use your display, remarketing AdWords, or really getting the most out of boosting your campaigns on Facebook.

Starting Campaigns too Early or Late. Timing really is everything in marketing. Sometimes a great campaign can be derailed by poor timing. When planning your campaigns, make sure you’re beginning them with enough time to get traction for the products or services you’re offering. Launching them too late will mean that a lot of viewers won’t catch them in time. Too early and people will forget about it before it’s time for conversion.

Not Optimizing Your Landing Page. Getting your audience to your page isn’t the goal, it’s converting them once they’re at your site. All of your paid advertising leads to this last step and the last step is not where you want to lose them. Make sure your landing page is mobile friendly and responsive. You don’t want any glitches to make them distrust the site itself. Finally, make sure your audience has clear call-to-action options above the fold so they do not need to scroll or work too hard to get in contact with you.

Not Using A/B Testing or Using a Set-it and Forget-it Approach. Your paid advertising efforts aren’t something you set up and never check on again. You should invest time in checking the analytics and A/B testing to see which campaigns work best.

Looking for Ways to Improve Your Paid Advertising Campaigns?

If you’re not getting the best ROI from your paid advertising campaigns or are just looking for ways to improve your current digital marketing strategies, contact Zero Gravity today. Our team of experienced marketing professionals can assess your current process and help to build better models for higher conversion.

Certified Partners

Download Our Whitepaper

Recent Posts

We are a full service marketing agency located in Connecticut specializing in digital marketing including search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaign management, website design, email marketing and social media marketing.